I'm know this was posted before on the old e-playa, but I'm sure there are thousands who've never read this harsh critique, complete with 'evil' midi music playing in the background, by a chrisitan fundamentalist who attended in 2001:

Dude, that is so cool! I mean, I thought Burning Man was so cool already, but now I think it is way cooler, cause, like it all makes sense now. Before I always had this feeling of wonder, like I couldn't understand what Burning Man was really really about, but now I finally get. That is so cool!

Niacin wrote:Even though I found myself snickering, I can admire the author's faith in writing this.

Oh please. That's not faith, that's fear.... fear that if the author does not walk the very straight and very narrow, Gawd will plunge him into Gehenna. Follow the link in the OP! SEE Pascal's Wager tarted up like a streetwalker! Blecch.

Conspiracy theory and freaked-outtedness do not faith make.

And I said it on the Late, Lamented Old Eplaya (heretofore known as the LLOE,) but here it is again. What amuses me about that article is that it ISN'T ENOUGH for the writer that Burning Man features sex, drugs, dancing, art, fun, nudity, more sex and more art, and all those other great things that the fundies hate. He also has to throw in all that bizarro secular-conspiracy Indian-burial-ground claptrap. Just amazing. Some people have no idea how to think.. which may explain why they let their invisible skydaddy think for them.

What's scary is that article is still around, recirculating among the religious fundamentalist types. I know people that if they saw it would consider every bit of it true just because it's in print. They would eat it up, never question the source, it would become absolute fact in their minds.

If I get to become a regional coordinator, this is the mindset of the people who will work against me. It's going to be interesting!

> I know people that if they saw it would consider every bit of it true
> just because it's in print.

I heard an interview about electronic fraud on the radio yesterday - just
caught the end of it, so I'm not sure what the entire point was. But the
guy they'd been talking to had received some (spam) e-mail for some
kind of pills, went to the web site, and ordered some.

He said he felt safe because the web site had the "As Seen On TV!" logo.

Of course, his credit card has been charged and he never received the
product. Idiot tax.

I heard it too, on "The World" (I'm pretty sure) on NPR. It was a segment about how it's possible that people complain so much about SPAM yet it's a heartily thriving industry. It was a very interesting segment.

Summer Solstice(witchcraft holiday)
city layout/Wiccan Symbol
And then that whole thing with NAMBLA/American Youth Sodomy Organization.I was like whoooooo,ok.

But don't get it twisted,i didn't say i agreed with everything he wrote,i just found some of it interesting,thats all. I choose not to take things too seriously,and i think that the dude who wrote that is.Like i said,to each his/her own.

Everyone has the opportunity for greatness, not fame, but greatness, for greatness only requires service--Martin Luther King Jr

notthat1 wrote:Summer Solstice(witchcraft holiday) city layout/Wiccan Symbol And then that whole thing with NAMBLA/American Youth Sodomy Organization.I was like whoooooo,ok.

But don't get it twisted,i didn't say i agreed with everything he wrote,i just found some of it interesting,thats all. I choose not to take things too seriously,and i think that the dude who wrote that is.Like i said,to each his/her own.

Aight -- I think he's completely fabricating the NAMBLA thing. I'm only a demi-vet, but in six years attending I've never seen any evidence that NAMBLA is out there. There is Nambla the Clown... but COME ON, anyone who would confuse Nambla the Clown with NAMBLA the organization has all the brains of a roll of fiberglass insulation. I don't think the American Youth Sodomy Organization even exists (unless it was a parody-type thing, which is possible.). Google revealed nothing either way.

The Summer Solstice occurs at the end of June. Quite a distance from Burning Man, which happens over Labor Day for the simple reason that people have an extra day off work. There is a minor-ish pagan festival called Lughnasa, which happens at the very beginning of August, but it ain't the Summer Solstice by a longshot.

The "Wiccan symbol" he depicts is nothing like a universal symbol. Wicca has a number of symbols, like the pentacle, but I did some fairly serious dabbling in Wicca in my tortured youth and never ran across anything like that green thing.

This guy is full of shit. Soup to nuts. Good for a chuckle, but his facts are bogus.

DogBoy wrote:Summer solstice...how is the longest day of the year Satanic? For that matter, how is a circle Satanic?

If on the midnight of the solstice you draw a big circle in the dirt, tie a virgin to an altar in the middle of it, and have a billy goat mount the virgin while drummers around the circle chant Satan's praise, that ought to do it. At least, as far as your neighbors are concerned, which after all is what really matters.

If on the midnight of the solstice you draw a big circle in the dirt, tie a virgin to an altar in the middle of it, and have a billy goat mount the virgin while drummers around the circle chant Satan's praise, that ought to do it. At least, as far as your neighbors are concerned, which after all is what really matters.

You are so cool, PJ

M*A*S*H 4207 We're not doctors.

"Just be yourself. All the good personalities are taken." stolen from my amazing friend Dwayne Gerken's fb status post.

That green thing is a goddess figure, variations of which have been around since before humans started writing history down. Long before Christ was even born.

Yes, I did know that. Goddess figures vary widely, which brings me to my original point -- that that figurine is not the universal symbol that Holy Joe described it as being. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.

PJ wrote:If on the midnight of the solstice you draw a big circle in the dirt, tie a virgin to an altar in the middle of it, and have a billy goat mount the virgin while drummers around the circle chant Satan's praise, that ought to do it. At least, as far as your neighbors are concerned, which after all is what really matters.

Dood, where's the wine? And howcome the goat has all the fun? Would a guy in goat leggings do?

Niacin - I have to fall in in Niacin's support here. The more seriously you take people like that, the more power and legitimacy you grant them. The people you really have to be scared of aren't the fringe freakos (look who's talking) but the mainstream people who have power and influence and money and voices and control other peoples' access to resources.

Conversely, the more shit like that article that those weirdos produce about BM, the more power and legitimacy they give us.

All the shit that weirdo was saying about BM - If I woulda read that on the net before going there, I would've looked it up on the net out of curiousity and totally wanted to go there. Mock Egyptian death rituals? I'm going.